A medicine which binds or contracts the parts of the body to which it is applied, restrains profuse discharges, coagulates animal fluids, condenses and strengthens the solids. – Coxe.
Modern practice inclines to the use of astringent, for internal applications, and styptic, for external.

An extraneous fossil, called also asteria and astroit. Astrites are stones in the form of small, short, angular, or sulcated columns, about an inch and a half long, and the third of an inch in diameter, composed of several regular joints, which, when separated, resemble a radiated star. – Encyc.
Astrites are said to be detached articulations of encrinites, a kind of marine polypier.

AS-TROG'RA-PHY, n. [Gr. αστηρ, or αστρον, a star, and γραφω, to describe.]

An instrument formerly used for taking the altitude of the sun or stars at sea.

A stereographic projection of the sphere, either upon the plane of the equator, the eye being supposed to be in the pole of the world; or upon the plane of the meridian, the eye being in the point of intersection of the equinoctial and the horizon.

A science which teaches to judge of the effects and influences of the stars, and to foretell future events by their situation and different aspects. This science was formerly in great request, as men ignorantly supposed the heavenly bodies to have a ruling influence over the physical and moral world; but it is now universally exploded by true science and philosophy.

The science which teaches the knowledge of the celestial bodies, their magnitudes, motions, distances, periods of revolution, aspects, eclipses, order, &c. This science depends on observations, made chiefly with instruments, and upon mathematical calculations.